TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

We have just rolled out Real Time updates for tasks!

You can now work on your task lists together with your colleagues and clients in real time. No reloading required.

Now, when your colleagues and clients add, edit, delete, complete, uncomplete, reassign, move, set priority on, attach files or in any way manipulate a task, you should see the changes instantly update on your screen.

At the moment only tasks lists are supported but we plan to add support for real time updates to others areas of the product such as the task detail page, milestones and messages over the coming weeks.

We hope you love these changes!

ps. Read the Tech note about the programming of real time updates.

We recently completed a large block of work that paves the way for great improvements to TeamworkPM in the coming months.

We spent 6 weeks changing the code for how we display tasks. Instead of building the HTML code for each task on our servers, we now send just the data and your browser transforms this into HTML.

For the nerds: This is all implemented using the excellent javascript MVVM framework, knockout.js.

There was a mountain of work involved making these changes – the code behind every task-listing and task-related action had to be reprogrammed and strenuously tested.

The final changes were rolled out over a weekend some 3 weeks ago and if you haven't noticed any changes, then we have done our job well.

Thanks to the beta testers who got involved and helped us iron out the glitches. We really appreciate your time.

The road ahead

The fact that tasks are now rendered in your browser instead of on our servers may not sound important but it's a big deal – for example, the recently released feature "Real time updates for tasks" would not have been possible before.

Now that we have the foundation laid, we can make TeamworkPM even better. We are working hard and have some great new features on the way so...

watch this space!

Have you found with yourself with no net connection when travelling, when you suddenly get the inspiration for a new idea. Now you can start writing all your ideas down in an email and the minute you’re back in connection you can email your workings directly into a notebook within a project.
 
Each project has a unique email address for which you can email notebooks to. To see what this is go to notebooks page and of the left you will see, post a notebook via email. Click this to see the unique email address.

Notebooks will only be posted from people where the FROM address is the same as the person's TeamworkPM email address. If the email is sent from an address not registered in TeamworkPM, the notebooks will not be posted and the email will be deleted.

It’s not very often that we get out of our little dungeons here in the south of Ireland, but next month Peter and Adrian are heading to Austin Texas for the world famous SXSW Convention.

Our plan is to show TeamworkPM to the rest of the world who have not yet had the privilege of  seeing it,  and also to meet up with as many of our existing clients as we possibly can. We are part of the Irish delegation and have invitations to hand out for the Irish showcase (Party) :-)

If you are attending, please come and find us. We will be in Exhibit hall 4 of the Austin convention center somewhere around Aisle 1200 and we would be delighted to meet up with you.

This month we've brought the much loved, and much requested, Search functionality to the iPad app.  Now, pretty much anything viewable in the iPad app can be searched for, from Tasks to Events, File comments to Notebooks.

It works the same way as the rest of the app - search for something and you get a column of results.  Tap on any of the results and another panel swooshes in from the right with more details.  When you're finished just throw it away and move on to the next search result.

As with the webapp you can choose the type of information to search for - so you can narrow it down to Messages or maybe Task Lists, for example.  However spinning through the results is usually so quick that you might as well leave the search set to everything and flick through the results to find what you want.

And finally, the app remembers your most recent search terms - so later on in the day you'll be able to quickly find your way back to that nugget of information.

That's it.  Let us know what you think.  And don't forget, if there's a feature you'd like to see added ahead of anything else, then vote for it by getting in contact!

This month we’ve made some changes to the default users selected to be notified when items are added/edited or comments are added to tasks, milestones, links, files and notebooks.

To explain why we added these new Settings it would be useful to get the backstory on how it worked previously....

Way back when we were first developing Teamwork we ran a consultancy business building websites and doing bespoke application development. We built Teamwork for ourselves to manage the growing workload after trialling several other apps which never lived up to our needs. 

When we started adding our clients to Teamwork to collaborate on the project they immediately started adding tasks but we found we were missing them because they were forgetting to check on the “Notify” checkbox. We had much fewer employees back then and with the number of projects we were trying to manage, we simply missed the new tasks being added as we weren’t being notified by email. We didn’t have the Dashboard tabs or Everything section in place back then so items were easily missed.

To combat this we added a Project Setting called “Notify Default” which was either “On” or “Off”. When a “client” user brought up the Add Task form and “Notify Default” was turned “On” we automatically checked the “Notify” checkbox on the Add Task form. Job done. We were now notified of new tasks being added.

As Teamwork started gaining traction by people outside our company the “Notify Default” started to grow legs. People found it handy to turn on so they also didn’t miss tasks being added. But they started missing Milestones being added so we extended the functionality to the Add Milestone form. Still one Setting but now doing 2 jobs - Notify checked on for Adding a task and Notify checked on for adding Milestones.

But it didn’t stop there....People were missing Messages being added. Files being added were missed....you can see where this is going.....we kept increasing the work that this one setting was doing to all areas of the app were something was being added. Result? Too many email notifications. The Setting was now either on or off and affected everywhere an item was added. It got even more hairy when we added the feature to email items to your project. The same old over-worked setting was being used and it was email overload for people. Something had to be done....

So now you know how this feature grew legs - what did we do to fix it?

We’ve removed this single Project Setting and replaced it with a setting per item 

New Settings:

• When a task is being created have Notify checked by default (On or Off)
• When a milestone is being created have Notify checked by default (On or Off)
• When a message/reply is being added notify everyone by default (On or Off)
• When a file is being added notify everyone by default (On or Off)
• When a notebook is being added notify everyone by default (On or Off)
• When a link is being added notify everyone by default (On or Off)

You can now pick and choose which items set the Notify automatically.

While we were tackling this one we also tackled something else people sent numerous feedback items on. The automatic selection of who get’s notified when a comment is being added to an item. 

We used to do this automatically by including the person who created the item the comment was being added to, the people who were assigned to the item, any people who previously commented on the item and if the item was completed (such as a task or milestone) we included that person to be notified automatically too. There was never an option to let you choose how this automatic list was generated so we added in 4 new options:

• Include the person who created the item (On or Off)
• Include any people who are assigned to the item (On or Off)
• Include any people who commented on the item (On or Off)
• Include the person who completed the item (On or Off)

Because comments can be added by people replying to email notifications we gave a separate set of settings specifically for emailed comments so you can have one set for in the app and another set for when comments are emailed in.

One other “Email” only setting is for when new messages are created via email. You can set this to always notify everyone on the project when someone emails a message to a project.

• When a message/reply is added via email always notify everyone (On or Off)

And there’s more....

When we introduced the Advanced Privacy which lets you lock items down to certain users and companies people were forgetting to notify people. We got numerous feedback requests to always default the Notify option to “Everybody Possible” if the Privacy of an item was changed. We could see why people wanted this and so we made it the default. This suited 90% of people but annoyed the remaining 10%. We didn’t have any way of letting people decide themselves how they wanted this scenario to be managed so the last new setting tackles this.

• When an item is made private notify everyone possible by default (On or Off)

When we rolled out this update we updated all the new settings for existing projects that previously used the “Notify Default” option so everything will work as normal for everyone. You can tweak these settings per project right now from the Project Settings page of each project.

If you copy a project we’ll also copy these settings to the new project and if you create a new project we’ll look up the settings used on the last project added and use these by default.

Email notifications are a double-edged sword. They are perfect for letting people know what happened on a project and keeping everyone in the loop but as your projects grow you could find yourself bombarded by email. 

Our next challenge is to let people opt-out of receiving email from particular projects and letting people remove themselves from certain discussions. 

We have a good plan in place for this so stay tuned....

Important Note : it looks like a few people are having problems logging in for the first time.  Don't worry if you're one of them, simply restart your iPad and you should be fine.  Apologies for any inconvenience.  Now continue on and enjoy the rest of the blog post!

The Future

We're releasing Version 1.0 of the iPad app today.  This first version probably doesn't have everything that you need, but it should make working on the iPad more enjoyable. For the bits that are missing a tap of a button brings you to the optimised website.  

However, we're moving fast to fill the gaps.  Even as you download version 1 today, we've already submitted version 1.1 to Apple for review.  That update has a new Events Panel to help keep you on top of your schedule.  

But there's no resting there, after that we'll be adding in Search and Timers with full featured filtering following along (that'll be perfect for managers - the ability to customise the information that you see across all of the projects under your control)

As we said in the introduction, we wanted to get it into your hands as early as possible so that you can help guide its growth and evolution.  We have strong plans for where it should go, but as always we're heavily influenced by your needs.  

If you like what you see then let us know so that we can see the parts that are working right.  If you have an idea then let us know that too - maybe we'll be able to make it happen, or if not, maybe it'll spark off something else.  But most of all enjoy the using our new iPad app - TeamworkPM HD.

Important Note : it looks like a few people are having problems logging in for the first time.  Don't worry if you're one of them, simply restart your iPad and you should be fine ( also - you don't need to do the restart unless you actually encounter the problem!).  Apologies for any inconvenience.  Now continue on and enjoy the rest of the blog post!

The rumours were true folks, TeamworkPM now has a dedicated home on your iPad. Download TeamworkPM HD and as soon as you log in you'll notice the distinctive yet familiar look and feel.  We've taken the standard floating panels that you're used to from apps like Facebook and Twitter but we've pushed them further.

The panels smoothly sweep across your iPad's screen.  They can be pushed, pulled and thrown away as if they were physical, touchable things.  They're the perfect size so there’s never too much information.  You don't get swamped in detail, but you can get to the detail fast.  And when you're finished just throw it away to get back to where you started.  

Turn your iPad over into landscape and all of the panels move subtly to make better use of the extra space.  Back to portrait and they all huddle up again, but with the more important panels getting a little bit extra room.

That navy screen you see when you start the app is the TeamworkPM Dashboard.  Just like the dashboard when you're working in your browser, it pulls information ( tasks, messages etc) from all of your active projects.  It's kind of like the launch pad for everything you do in TeamworkPM.  To get you started each morning, the Dashboard automatically shows you a panel detailing all of the tasks that you're due to work on that day.

From there you can move anywhere.  Tap on pretty much anything and a new panel slides in with extra details.  As you focus on this new information, all of the other panels darken out a little.  Throw the panel to the left and it'll try to move over to give you extra room.  Move the panel back right and it'll go to it's original position.  Throw it off to the right with a bit more speed and the panel will simply disappear altogether - not needed anymore.

You can do all of this across any number of TeamworkPM accounts from the one app. Up on the top right hand corner of the Dashboard are your account details. Tap on them and you can instantly switch to a different account, or add a new one.

The main idea behind TeamworkPM on iPad is movement and flow.  Making your Workflow easier makes your Work easier.  But movement is hard to describe in words so take a look at this quick video (or even better go download the app and try it for yourself!)

 
The History Tour starts here or Why has it taken this long?

Let's take a quick spin back through history to explain how the iPad App came to be.
People use TeamworkPM to plan everything from earthquake relief programs right down to the weekend camping trip.  As you can imagine the subsequent range of devices used to access TeamworkPM is huge.  

We're using the iPad app first off to nail everything down, and once we're happy we can start to bring it other platforms - but with the tweaks needed to make it feel more at home of each device.
The obvious advantage of all of this extra effort : new features will appear across all of the devices at the same time.

Read more about the features.

Important Note : it looks like a few people are having problems logging in for the first time.  Don't worry if you're one of them, simply restart your iPad and you should be fine.  Apologies for any inconvenience.  Now continue on and enjoy the rest of the blog post!

The Project Panel

A good way to introduce the new iPad app without getting too distracted is to focus on a single panel.  Once you see how one works, you'll be comfortable with all of them.
An obvious candidate is the Project Panel.  It's the hub of getting things done for a given topic so it's likely that you'll spend a good chunk of time here. ( Don't worry Managers, we have new panels planned which will help you to stay on top and in control of multiple projects simultaneously.)

Unlike all of the other panels, this panel is wide.  It takes up the full screen and serves as a background to all your work on a project.  The aim was to make it feel like you've entered a project.  So no matter how many sub panels you drill down through, there’s  enough space to see the project logo in the top left - so you'll always know what you're working on at a glance.

On the left of the Project Panel, you have a standard list of all of the usual project sections - Tasks, Milestones, Messages etc.  If you use either the iPhone or the Android app you'll be pretty familiar with this layout.  

 Tapping on a section will slide in a sub panel from the right.  As you bring in more and more sub panels, they'll re-arrange themselves automatically to give you the best view given the amount of space available.  You can drag, or throw, a panel off to the right to get rid of it - but it doesn't have to be the top panel, you can drag any one and get rid of multiple sub panels with a single gesture.

If you're in portrait mode the activity section takes up most of the screen.  This is where you can keep in touch with everything that's happening on the project.  Just like Latest Activity in the Web App, you'll see all of the tasks, messages, milestones, comments, files and notebooks as they’ve been added or edited over the last while.  If you want to find out more about a particular activity, simply tap on it and a new panel will slide in with the extra details.

When you rotate the iPad into landscape mode, instead of simply expanding out the activity column, you get some statistics about the Project.  The top green progress bar represents every task in the project - irrespective of who it's assigned to or when it was completed.  If it's a long running project it can be fun to know just how many hundreds or thousands of tasks your group has gotten through!  

The next section breaks down all of those tasks that have either a Start or a Due Date. You can instantly see the proportion of tasks that are due today or, hopefully not, have run late.  Tap on any of the donut graphs and a very handy panel slides in listing just those appropriate tasks.  So it's your one stop shop for everything that needs to be done straight away, or should have been finished before now!

When you're finished with those tasks, throw away the panel and you're back to the Project and the final section - the people section.  Here is the avatar of every person working on the project.  If you haven't uploaded a photo of yourself yet then now you have some incentive, as every time you open a project you'll see the community of people pulling together to get it over the line.

Syncing

Unlike the iPhone or Android apps, you don’t have to remember to sync with the server. Every time you slide in a new panel it instantly checks to see if there’s any new information ready to download.  It’s pretty much transparent so mostly you won’t even notice it happening.  But for those of you who still have the habit : pull to refresh is there for when you feel the need.

That's it.  We have a cunning plan to make this panel even more useful, but we'd love to hear what you think.  What would you like to see here?  Be as mad with the ideas as you like - they may not make it in, but they might inspire something that does!

Read more about what we have planned for the future of the app.

Last year we spent a lot of time working on new integrations between other popular 3rd party apps and TeamworkPM. Our aim was to enable our users to easily pull and push data between their other favourite apps and ours.  

As you know we listen and one of the biggest requests that we have been getting recently is the ability to log time directly to Harvest. Accurate and timely billing is a hugely significant factor in every business’ cash flow, with the latest update to our Harvest integration we’ve made it easier to accurately record your time on clients projects and seamlessly reflect this in your invoices.

We released the first stage of our integration with Harvest back in May 2012. This allowed you to simply export invoices in Teamwork to Harvest.

This month we’ve rolled out part two of the Harvest integration. You can now start a Harvest Timer directly within TeamworkPM! The time will be then instantly be logged in your Harvest account.

To set this up, you will first need to have a Harvest account :-)

1) Navigate to  the settings section in the top right, select site settings, under the integrations tab you will see the following option:

2) This is a per project setting and must also be enabled within your individual projects. To do this from the overview section, select options in the top right, then project settings.

3) At the bottom of the setting page enable your Harvest time tracking

4) Now you can start logging your time straight to your Harvest account. From the task tab, select the task you wish to log time against and click into the task details page. In the top right corner you will see the new Harvest button.

5) Now simply hit the Harvest button and your timer will start running.

6) When you're finished stop the timer by clicking it again. This will be give you the option to send your time to Harvest for approval.

A couple of things to remember, when you select the project to log the time to:

In Harvest it is locked to that project. Once time has been approved in Harvest should you need to submit more time you will need to get the time approval removed.

You can only assign one Harvest project to a TeamworkPM project. Within TeamworkPM the setting must be enabled within each project for you to be able to log the time directly in Harvest.

We have also put together this short video to show you how to set up the Harvest timers in your account.